HIGHTSTOWN — A handicapper might have looked at Pingry’s first round, 3-2 win over Lawrenceville in the State Prep Softball Tournament, compared it with Lawrenceville’s 4-1 win over Peddie in the regular season and declared Pingry a favorite to beat the Falcons in Tuesday’s semifinal.

If so, they would not have been more wrong.

Peddie moved into its fourth consecutive State Prep Softball Championship Tuesday with an easy 11-1 win over Pingry in six innings. The win means Peddie will host the title game this Thursday afternoon against the winner of the other semifinal between Blair and Hun.

Although Peddie was a 3-2 loser to Blair in its last meeting, the Falcons had earned the first seed in the tournament with a 3-2 win over the Bucs earlier in the season.

Advertisement

Peddie managed only six hits off Pingry starter Katie Marino but also took advantage of four walks, two hit batters and three Pingry errors. And the Flacons made it all seem like much more by running the bases with reckless abandon.

Peddie head coach Tim O’Reilly locked the stop sign in the vault and kept his arm constantly whirling in a circular motion all day from the third base coaching box. The Falcons served notice when they were able to score two runs on a single sacrifice fly in the first and they never let up, clearly rattling a stunned Pingry defense.

“We ran a bit,” O’Reilly said of his team’s approach. “What can I say? I like to go, especially when I see a vulnerability. When I see a chance I like to take advantage. My philosophy is, ‘I’m here to stop you.’”

The only time the Falcons weren’t racing around the bases was when Evie Claussell broke into a trot when she led off the fifth with a no-doubt-about-it home run over the left field fence. That blast put Peddie up 8-1. An inning later they ended the game via the 10 run rule by running wild yet again, picking up three runs without the benefit of a hit.

Thursday’s trip to the final marks the second time in O’Reilly’s coaching tenure that he has taken a team to the championship game in four consecutive years. Peddie won the state championship in 2011 and 2013 and was runner-up in 2012.

That means seniors Melissa Bollmeyer, Olivia Bundschuh and outfielder Jade Williams get a fourth chance to play for the title.

“We’re fighting our way through this,” O’Reilly said of his team’s latest championship drive. “We’re not as deep as we have been but we’ve got some good girls. They play hard and they work hard and they’re having some success. We lost a big player with Drew Washington out with a concussion. That’s a big glove and a big bat that is out of the lineup but we’re making do with what we have.”